When the Siliguri Tea Auction Committee opened on October 29, 1976, it was meant to solve a specific problem: how to bring the marketplace closer to the tea gardens of North Bengal.
Then the West Bengal CM Siddhartha Shankar Ray inaugurated the auction centre, giving tea producers in Darjeeling, the Dooars, and the Terai a dedicated platform closer to their gardens. Until then, producers had to depend heavily on distant auction markets, particularly Kolkata, making the movement and sale of tea more expensive and cumbersome.
The first public auction held on the same day was modest by today's standards. There were 16 sellers, 132 buyers and seven brokers. But the location was strategic. Siliguri sits at the gateway to three of India's best-known tea-producing belts—the Darjeeling hills, the Dooars and the Terai—and was ideally placed to connect gardens with buyers, brokers and transport networks.
The timing was equally significant. The 1970s witnessed a rapid expansion of Crush, Tear, Curl (CTC) tea production across North Bengal. Unlike the smaller quantities and specialised character of orthodox teas, CTC production was increasingly geared towards a large domestic market and required an efficient system capable of handling substantial volumes. A local auction centre could reduce transportation costs, speed up transactions and give producers a more competitive marketplace.
The Siliguri Tea Auction Committee was subsequently licensed by the Tea Board of India to operate the regional auction, turning what was essentially a logistical necessity into an organised commercial institution. Half a century later, the scale of the operation bears little resemblance to its beginnings.
According to current chairman Arun Periwal, the centre now has 483 registered sellers and 497 buyer members. Its warehousing capacity has expanded to approximately 11 lakh square feet, allowing it to handle tea arriving from hundreds of factories across the region.
The growth has been particularly closely linked to the rise of CTC tea. India remains overwhelmingly a CTC tea-producing and consuming market, while North Bengal is one of the country's major CTC-producing regions. The Dooars and Terai, in particular, are dominated by CTC production, making the Siliguri auction an important commercial link between the gardens and the national market.
Kamal Kishore Tewari, a former chairman of the committee, recalls the transformation from its relatively small beginnings into one of the country's major CTC auction centres. “We started with a small operation and now we are into India’s second-largest CTC tea auction hub after Guwahati,” Tewari said.
The golden jubilee celebrations are being planned not merely as a commemoration of an institution, but as an attempt to bring the tea industry closer to the wider community.
Periwal said the two-day programme will include a tea carnival and a drone show for the community on October 2, followed by a high-level business summit and a charity auction on October 3. The organisers are expecting West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari to attend the programme on the second day.
“Ultimately, the dialogue serves to outline how we will honour the cultural heritage of tea while showcasing the modern technological advancements and economic scale of the trade,” Periwal said. The charity auction is intended to raise funds for the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund, adding a public-service dimension to the anniversary celebrations.
The story of Siliguri's auction centre is, in many ways, the story of North Bengal's changing tea economy. What began with a handful of sellers and buyers was created because geography demanded a market closer to the gardens. Five decades later, that same geography remains its greatest strength.
The Darjeeling hills, Dooars and Terai continue to feed the auction with tea, while Siliguri provides the commercial bridge connecting the region's producers to buyers across the country and the wider international market.
From 16 sellers and 132 buyers in its inaugural auction to hundreds of registered participants and nearly 11 lakh square feet of warehousing today, the centre's 50-year journey reflects how a strategically located regional marketplace grew into an essential piece of India's CTC tea trade.
